Forum Posts Feed
System for taking and organising reading notes
< Next Topic | Back to topic list | Previous Topic >
Pages: ‹ First < 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 >
Posted by Dr Andus
Apr 29, 2012 at 02:05 PM
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>Dr Andus wrote:
>>But from now on I will have to be disciplined to stick with this
>system.
>
>We here at CA (CRIMPers Anonymous) are with you, brother, to support you in
>this virtuous cause.
Thank you. Yes, I’m a PIMoholic. But this is a strange support group, as I also come here to get my fix. :)
On a different note, I don’t know how profound an observation this is but I just realised that organising is about making (recurring) decisions about what to keep together and what to separate (or rather the principles behind the decisions). In this case I have realised I was wrong to separate my data and notes into 20 different PIMs.
On the other hand I have made the conscious decision to keep my academic research project entirely separate from my day job and personal life, so I use different to-do apps and calendars for those (Amode for the former, Google Cal+Toodledo for the latter). However, when it comes to data and notes, even day job and personal info now goes into CT (although into separate “projects,”, i.e. databases).
Posted by Dr Andus
Nov 6, 2012 at 12:49 PM
Gary Carson wrote:
>I think the fastest and easiest way to take notes from books, newspapers, etc., is to
>use a digital voice recorder and then transcribe your audio notes with Dragon
>Naturally Speaking.
I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time but what’s been stopping me was that this method would still require me to compare the transcribed text with the original text using the PC, to make sure that quotes are correct, which would be very time-consuming with let’s say an hour-long recording of reading notes on a long text (e.g. a book).
However, I’ve just tried to use the Dragon app on my iPod Touch (4th gen.) again, and to my amazement the latest version worked really well. Here is my workflow:
1. Sit in a quiet room in a comfy armchair with my book and my iPod. When I find a quote I want to keep (or make a comment about the reading), I tap the Dragon Dictation app and dictate my quote/comment. There is a word limit but it can handle about a half a page, which is usually enough.
2. Copy text to the clipboard.
3. Switch to Nebulous Notes and paste it into a doc I created for this book. Now I compare the transcript with the original and correct any mistakes. Accuracy is lower than in the desktop version of Dragon but I’d say it’s about 90-95% (as opposed to 99%). I can definitely live with that, as it saves an awful lot of typing.
4. Repeat process as many times as necessary.
5. Sync Nebulous Notes with Dropbox.
6. Import text document into ConnectedText on the PC. Done!
Before this I was doing this at my PC sitting in my office chair and dictating my reading notes and quotes directly into desktop Dragon, which is a lot less comfortable and took a toll on my back (not to mention the temptation to switch to a browser and do something else instead).
Don’t be fooled by the low (3-star) rating of the app and the negative reviews. They must be people who have never tried the desktop Dragon and don’t realise that this is not the Star Trek Communicator yet, here you need to adapt to the machine and learn how to dictate properly.
Anyway, this is a major development in my own note-taking system for reading hard copy books and articles. For electronic copies it’s easy: it’s the iPad and GoodReader.
Posted by Dr Andus
Nov 6, 2012 at 01:05 PM
Dr Andus wrote:
>Gary Carson wrote:
>>I think the fastest and easiest way to take notes from books,
>newspapers, etc., is to
>>use a digital voice recorder and then transcribe your audio
>notes with Dragon
>>Naturally Speaking.
>1. Sit in a quiet room in a comfy armchair with my
>book and my iPod. When I find a quote I want to keep (or make a comment about the reading),
>I tap the Dragon Dictation app and dictate my quote/comment. There is a word limit but
>it can handle about a half a page, which is usually enough.
I should have mentioned that this iPod Touch system would only work in a room with wifi (unless you have an iPhone), as Dragon Dictation requires an internet connection.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Nov 6, 2012 at 10:27 PM
Dr Andus wrote:
>Dragon Dictation requires an internet connection.
I wonder why?
I would assume that the recognition happens in the cloud (as OCR does in Evernote), but in that case the success rate shouldn’t be lower for the mobile version of the software.
Posted by Dr Andus
Nov 6, 2012 at 11:26 PM
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>Dr Andus wrote:
>>Dragon Dictation requires an internet connection.
>
>I wonder why?
>
>I would assume that the recognition happens in the cloud (as OCR does in Evernote),
Yes.
>but in that case the success rate shouldn’t be lower for the mobile version of the
>software.
I think the reason for that is that you can train the desktop version to recognise your voice (and probably the mic is of higher quality), while there is no such training involved with the app (and the mic is not as good). It’s actually amazing it works as well as it does without the training. Thick accents though may get in the way.
But my hope is still to be able to find a scanner app with OCR that would allow me to extract specific lines of an image snapped with the iPod and transfer it easily to a text file.